Posts tagged 1982

A Marfa Haircut was originally published as a contribution to the 2016 New Myths publication- a compilation of written works published in tandem with the 2016 Marfa Myths/Mexican Summer music festival in Marfa, TX.

A Marfa Haircut

A Marfa Haircut is one which concerns itself mainly with an innate accommodation of the region’s unrelenting physical elements. Meaning, you are not the boss of your hair. Bosses of your hair in Marfa, Texas include:

-The Wind

-The Dust

-The Hard Water

-The Arid Climate

-The Sun

(I’ll address you the reader with the assumption that you are currently experiencing the challenging effects of the above-mentioned forces, and as if you were my prospective client, asking for my advice and intervention.)

As I am a practitioner of care for the local citizens’ hair, an endless variety of sculptural challenges are assigned to me by these bosses and their soul-crushing management tactics. It is my duty to bestow upon you, my client, a shape which will deftly bend to the stubborn mandates of your unrelenting natural dictators while simultaneously liberating you from the sub-par textural chains which bind you and cause you to have bad self-esteem about your personal silhouette.

A total rejection of conventional structural n’ textural ethics must be enacted to move forward with sculptural efficacy in this town. A straight line means a whole lot of bullshit when said line is destined to be tossed up in the wind and showered in invisible silt the moment it’s owner enters the outdoors. What does a straight line have to offer you in the way of aesthetic appeal or comfort when it looks like a discombobulated bookshelf is sitting on your forehead?

With this in mind, I must use my scissors to mimic the overall effect of structural accord via the honoring of textural balance over mathematical symmetry. You dig? The strategic move in this case is to combat disorder with disorderliness. Symmetry of form serves only to provide us with an endless supply of mythical physical frustrations when our Bosses make it their daily aim to throw a stick in our symmetrically responsible spokes, no?

So I carve out psychotic wave patterns that move wildly with this wind, this dry air, these inherent tangles and snags. I “take the punch” and form the hair around said punch, instead of clenching against it. The result is a hyper fluid, always en flux hair shape that responds to the tyranny imposed upon it like an unfazed 17 year-old, laughing in the face of her raging parents with their undeniably forceful and ultimately fruitless attempts at telling her what to do.

Have a look at the hair of those you party with, or pass on the street during your time in this town. I would like to hope that you are overwhelmed by the teenage power femme resiliency that abounds on people’s heads here but at the very least that you notice how collectively symbiotic our aesthetic and the aesthetic of our Wind, Sun et. al have come to be.